After handing the All Blacks their first-ever Dunedin defeat on Saturday 9 July, the Irish national rugby team parked up at Vault 21. And evidently, they weren’t too keen on leaving.
Chris Dickie, a bartender at Vault, said that as closing time grew near that night, staff at the bar started turning on the lights to give patrons the hint that it was time to go home. It was around this time that some genius on the Irish team had a bright idea: promptly unscrewing every single lightbulb in the bar to prevent the staff from ending the party.
“He didn’t unscrew them all the way, though”, said Chris. “He unscrewed them just enough that the lights wouldn’t come on, but not enough that the bulb would fall out. It was quite brilliant, actually.” Chris told Critic Te Arohi that the team didn’t stay long after that. He heard them give a rowdy team chant with the lights off, and then “actually screwed them back in as they were leaving.” Chivalry still isn’t dead, it seems.
Chris worked at Vault until the wee hours of the morning, after the Irish team eventually made their way out into the Guinness-tinged night, towards presumably shamrock-greener pastures. They were quickly surrounded by throngs of green- and black-clad rugby supporters, in what became a rather tumultuous and thoroughly packed evening in town.
The match itself was a bit of an embarrassment. It was the All Blacks’ biggest loss in Aotearoa since 1992, meaning that it was the biggest loss in the lifetime of some of the players on the line. With the Irish coming in 5:1 underdogs, some punters in the stands made a handsome profit, despite betting against the All Blacks being legally considered treason. Other, more patriotic folk made a hearty loss, with one disgruntled punter saying simply that the match was: “a shitshow for my TAB account”.
Critic Te Arohi generally avoids too much sports content, mostly because we couldn’t name an All Blacks player to save our lives (this may also legally count as treason). We are, however, very much for the drunken shenanigans that a night out can bring – and it appears that the Irish team came prepared for hijinks galore.